with only one place to go that might be (relatively) safe.
Sara watched in confusion as I tore through my closet, shoving things around—until I found the body armor made to ward off vampire and werewolf attacks buried in the back. I tossed it on the bed, soon followed by my combat boots, trench coat, matched guns, extra ammo, and the hunter’s belt. Next came the Amber Kiss perfume I’d hidden under the sink in the bathroom, designed to make me smell less like food to Others. I wrapped the fragile vials in a towel and placed them carefully on top of everything else.
Sara eyed the piles curiously but said nothing. All of it was shoved unceremoniously into a duffel bag slung over my shoulder. She followed as I grabbed my purse off the table and, as an afterthought, plucked my rolodex off my desk and tossed that in my duffel as well.
She gave me a look when I tucked the mostly empty whiskey bottle into my duffel, too.
We trekked down to my car, tossing everything in the back. Sara got into the driver’s seat without asking, and I didn’t question it. Jingling the keys, she glanced at me. “Any ideas yet?”
“Yeah. Let’s go pick up some stuff for you. I think I know where to go from there.”
It didn’t take long to get to Sara’s cute little brick number tucked away in one of New York’s most excellent examples of upper-middle-class suburbia. Her dogs, Buster and Roxie, had their paws up between the slats of the white picket fence, tails going a mile a minute as they barked a furious storm in greeting.
Sara threw together a suitcase with enough clothes and necessities to keep her going for a week or two. She made a few calls, including one to Jen telling her to take a couple of paid days off, which made me cringe. I’d pulled in a lot of dough doing that job for The Circle last year, but reserves were running low, and there was no guarantee we’d be able to pull off working any jobs until the worst of this mess was over. Aside from which, I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to operate now that my face had been plastered on a leading newspaper, no doubt to follow soon on the Internet. That was sure to hamper my undercover work, just as the media coverage after the incident with Royce and Max Carlyle had resulted in a couple of jobs where my cover had been unwittingly blown by curious bystanders and, in one memorable instance, the mark himself recognizing me.
That was a problem for later. For now, I had Sara at my back. Depending on her was something I’d normally rail against, but for now I was willing to make an exception. There were too many variables and too many immediate troubles to let my pride get in the way of our safety.
The dogs were a bit of a problem. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but we put the backseats down and let the dogs ride in the bed of my SUV. They kept shoving their heads between the seats and slobbering on me until I opened the back windows so they could stick their heads out instead.
Sara let me take the wheel this time. As I headed toward 495, she cleared her throat, breaking what I came to realize had become an increasingly tense silence between us.
“I take it you’ve got an idea of where to go now?”
I noted the angle of the sun before answering her, tightening my grip on the wheel. “Yes. You’re not going to like it.”
She snorted, waving at the traffic around us. “This isn’t exactly how I envisioned spending my day, Shia. I suppose it beats doing more surveillance on the Riker case, but we’re going to have a lot of pissed off clients and demands for refunds soon if we don’t come up with a plan. Hiding somewhere for months or years until this trial is over doesn’t strike me as a great way to keep the business going. Plus, I’m not sure how we’re going to pull off staying hidden while keeping the company’s doors open.”
“I have an idea,” I said, keeping focused on the traffic ahead. “We just need to last a month outside of the office. Until I know for sure what will happen to me.”
When I glanced over, her skin had taken on a touch of that sickly pallor she’d had earlier. She